Huge mounds of earth slipped off a hillside in the morning and buried the men as they worked on two apartment blocks.

About 160 rescuers were deployed to hunt for the workers, and police said that the bodies of two Bangladeshi workers and one from Myanmar were pulled from the debris.

The other 11, who included one Malaysian supervisor and workers from Indonesia and Bangladesh, were still unaccounted for late Saturday at the site in the Tanjung Bungah area, said local police official Anuar Omar.

Bangladeshi Mohammad Jashim Hussein Ahmad, who was working in the area at the time, told the state-run Bernama news agency the landslide happened suddenly and was over in minute, and the other workers had no time to run.